<span style="color: #222222;">US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo today called on countries to offer asylum to ethnic minorities fleeing China's troubled Xinjiang region. He said this during his visit to oil-rich Kazakhstan, a country that borders the Xinjiang region of China.<br />'' <br />'' At a press conference with Kazakh foreign minister Mukhtar Tleuberdi in Nur-Sultan, Pompeo said, the US simply asks to provide safe refuge and asylum for those seeking to flee China. He was meeting top officials in ex-Soviet Kazakhstan as he rounds off a five-nation tour.<br />'' <br />'' His visit to the Kazakh capital Nur-Sultan also saw him meet with Kazakhs who say their family members are detained in Xinjiang, where over a million ethnic Uighurs, Kazakhs, and other minorities are believed to have been incarcerated as part of an unprecedented security crackdown in the region.<br />'' <br />''<br />''Kazakhstan has allowed several ethnic Kazakhs of Chinese citizenship who fled the region to stay in the country but has not given any of them asylum, a reluctance local activists attribute to Chinese pressure.</span>